The Erasmus program designed to facilitate the interaction of many different cultures around the world. I had previously participated in an exchange program in 2017 to Denmark, and this was incredibly influential in developing myself. It was an amazing experience that left me with many incredible friends and life-changing experiences. After concluding this year abroad, I began my university journey in my home country of Australia, but I never forgot about my time overseas and I was excited once again venture outside of my country and comfort zone. Ireland was my first choice in the selection process, and I am very happy that I was given the opportunity to travel to this beautiful country.
The journey to Ireland was a long one. I left Brisbane airport in the late afternoon, with Doha as the first stop of the journey. It was a long flight, and sleep was hard to come by, but after 12 hours we touched down in the capital of Qatar. From there, the next leg went straight to Dublin, and after an unpleasant 8 hours in the air I touched down in Dublin airport.
Me after landing in Doha
One aspect of my exchange that I was unsure about was my living arrangements. Unfortunately, I did not manage to book a room to live on campus like many of my peers, so I had to source other living arrangements. After much searching, I managed to find a third-party company to provides accommodation for university students all over Dublin. This solution addressed one of my main concerns with the process; and that was having to blindly book accommodation without a tour to check the quality of the living space. I was under the impression that I would need to rent a room in a share house owned by a private individual, and going into that situation blindly left a lot of things that could have gone wrong. By renting a room in this block of apartments owned by a company, the was an assurance of consistency and quality that put my mind at ease. Additionally, as they understand many students will be travelling large distances to live in their building, they gave the option to have a virtual tour over video chat, and this solidified my confidence.
No matter how prepared one is for the process of moving to another country, there is always things that one overlooks or forgets. For example, after travelling for more than 24 hours and wanted to do nothing more than sleep, I realised that one of the things that I forgot to bring with me was bed linen. After being delayed by being completely unfamiliar with the local department stores and struggling to function on little-to-no sleep, I arrived home from a shopping trip with new bed linen and was ready to begin building a life for myself in this new country (after a good night sleep, of course).
One of the disadvantages of living outside of campus was the travel time to get to UCD every day. It takes around fifty minutes to get to university every day and 50 minutes to get home again. Though this is less than ideal, the area that I live in is extremely accessible from the rest of the city centre, meaning that its inconvenient to travel to university, but within walking distance of all the amazing things that Dublin has to offer. The most convenient thing is that I live right around the corner from a large shopping centre that provides everything I could need, but the highlight of living where I do is its closeness to an amazing art store.
Art, particularly painting and drawing, has been a passion of mine for many years. Sadly, the weight limits set for my luggage by the airline severely limited the amount of art supplies I was able to bring with me to keep my hobby going.
Returning to my journey to university. This distance from the campus required me to familiarise myself with Irish public transport. In Australia, trains were my main method of transportation around the city, and my home town of Brisbane is particularly known for have a very good, city-wide train line. Trains are very easy to navigate, you turn up at the large, obvious station, board the train and disembark when you get to your destination. There is no problem of having to locate the correct bus stop on a busy street, learning the routes of the bus, paying attention to make sure you signal when you need to disembark so that the driver knows to stop for you. Though this may seem very simple for many people that take buses regularly, it was a skill that I needed to learn and there were a few stressful mornings in the first few weeks of my arrival where I found myself lost on O’Connell Street, unable to find the correct bus stop that will take me where I need to go.
Since then, I have been introduced to some very helpful apps by some Irish friends of mine and I have more experience with the bus routes, and I now feel comfortable navigating around the entire city.
In conclusion, moving to Dublin for my Erasmus program has been an experience filled with ups and downs. However, it has mostly been a positive experience and I’m excited to have many fun experiences throughout the rest of my exchange.